WildStarWiki:Manual of Style
This Manual of Style outlines standards for clean, consistent formatting for wiki content on WildStar Wiki. This is a guideline and can be occasionally overridden where circumstances warrant it, and will never be perfect for every situation. Please when possible keep to the advice outlined in this article, so others may use your edits as an example for their own articles or sections. These guidelines are a summary of the most important guidelines for the WildStar Wiki. Additional help help and guidance can be found on Wikipedia at Wikipedia Manual of Style. Article layout One of the most important fundamentals of wiki editing, is in how to structure a wiki article. Structure is a powerful thing as it dictates the order and flow of the page, and can influence what people contribute, where it goes, and how it might be written. Structure has the equal power to confuse people just as bad writing does. A well structured article is more likely to maintain a high quality, long-lived page and source of information. Wiki articles and pages are organize into sections, in a hierarchical structure like an outline. Wherever possible use logical structure. Each section should start with an introduction, similar to the start of the article itself, and then have its own subsections below it if any. Prefer using shallow structures over deep ones with many levels of sub-sections. Too many nested sections can lead to a overly confusing pages. See Section headings for more info on writing section headings. Most importantly, keep your layouts consistent, within a page and across pages. The following manual of style sections will offer some good advice on keeping your articles clean, consistent, and clear. They are generally presented in the order in which they should appear in an article. Top non-article content Non-article content, such as disambiguation and article message boxes, should be located above the lead. If no template, box, or precedent exists for a "non-content" type top message, then a simple indented italicized note may be used, which is preferably a complete sentence but does not necessarily have to be. See also Article message boxes, Disambiguations and Navigation boxes, below. Examples :Were you looking for Oceanic realms, or the Realms list? :Were you looking for Oceanic realms, or the Realms list? Infoboxes Infoboxes are generally boxes which usually appear at the top-right corner of the page, which summarize data relating to the article. These are placed immediately underneath any top non-article content with no extra lines or spaces. As a side-note, the item tooltips that can be seen when hovering over certain kinds of links, are actually constructed directly from these "page infoboxes". Example Lead section An page should begin with a short introductory lead section, just before the first section heading. The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, and explaining why the subject is interesting or notable. It should be between one or two paragraphs long, and should be written in a clear and accessible style so that the reader is encouraged to read the rest of the article. The lead should not have its own explicit Section or any section header. Lead page title If possible the title of the page should lead the first sentence of the article. The exact page title should put in bold using three apostrophes, like article title the first time the article mentions the title. King Banana III was King of Fruits during and after the Second War, and can now be found in Galeras, in the region of Alizar. :King Banana III was King of Cereal Bowls during and after the Second War, and can now be found in Galeras in the region of Alizar. Lead bolding Avoid other uses of bold in the first sentence, except when denoting alternative titles without links. Follow the normal rules for italics in denoting books or other important works. Do not make or put links in the emboldened page title in the article's lead sentence, or make bold links normally in general text. King Banana II, or King Banana, was King of Fruits during and after the Second War, and is an often referenced character in the Guide to Banana Wars trilogy. King Banana can now be found in Galeras, in the region of Alizar. :King Banana II or King Banana was King of Fruits during and after the Second War, and is an often referenced character in the Guide to Banana Wars trilogy. King Banana can now be found in Galeras, in the region of Alizar. Lead italics In the lead sentence of a page, putting part or all of the bold title in italics will mainly apply only the titles of books and games whether fictitious or real. The example below shows the whole name in italics with the page name in bold. :The '''Guide to Banana Wars' trilogy consists of ''Bananas of Wrath, War of the Bananas, and The Banana King books. :The '''Guide to Banana Wars' trilogy consists of ''Bananas of Wrath, War of the Bananas, and The Banana King books. Table of contents A table of contents (TOC) will automatically appear default as left-aligned above the first explicit section heading, in articles with three or more user sections. This default behavior is considered standard style, and usually should be followed as such. However, the TOC can be altered using page options in wiki text, sometimes referred to as magic words. * __TOC__ to force the TOC to a certain position * to completely remove the TOC from a page * to force the TOC to float right, and/or to a certain position. See . A right-aligned TOC should only be used if it is very long, like over 15 entries, and an information box is not on the right side already. If you are having trouble positioning images, TOC or infoboxes, or find that you are having to change TOC behavior across multiple pages, feel free to contact any moderator or admin for help. Article main content This is where the main article content for the page would go, which should begin with a section heading, and is the part that covers regular page material. The content continues with main article text, content, and additional main article sections, and so on. For information on writing the actual article content itself, see the Writing section below. Sections The article main content contains its own sections. Section headers should be un-decorated with no extra italics, bold, html markup, etc., and should use spaces between the section title and the markup. Section name should be generally be cased like regular sentences, where only the first word is capitalized, unless is otherwise a proper name. After the article main content sections, other standard page sections sometimes called footer sections, can be placed to hold standard types of ancillary data. These should be always be placed after the regular article body, farther down the page. Regular: Section name Proper name: Banana King II Boiler-plate Below is a basic standard skeleton for making a page, show in in wiki text, and illustrates some of the parts that surround the main article content (some not yet discussed). Many types of articles, such as , have standard predefined skeletons, or similar boiler-plate for placing around main article content. First main content header See also * Banana II External links * bananatimes.com General Media - images, videos, other The first regular standard footer section, named Media , is for general images, videos, or others (such as audio, if there is any), that relate in some way to the article subject. See Media below for more detail. Each media type should go in a separate sub-section under a media section. For the most part media for a wiki page can be grouped together above all of the other standard sections, like the 'see also' section, or the final 'navigation boxes', or 'references'. The media section for a page should normally be organized such that: # At least two videos or images can be placed side by side at minimum width, and ... # The tag is used to help encourage others to add media to the page. :Note: other media placed in article main content 'sub-sections', page info-boxes, etc..., should still be added in whatever way makes sense for that context, which do not necessarily need or use galleries. Example Media section with images and only 2 videos: Media Images Images.png Videos Banana Lore lesson - Banana II|Banana II lore lesson Fall of Banana|Banana I lore lesson